“[Trump] said, ‘Kristi, come on over here. Shake my hand,'” Noem said. “I shook his hand, and I said, ‘Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.’ And he goes, ‘Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?'”

Noem thought he was joking.

“I started laughing,” she said. “He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.”

The conversation between the lawmaker and the president was revealed during a segment of South Dakota’s edition of carpool karaoke.

Unsurprisingly, this is not Trump’s first mention of his desire to be immortalized on the mountain. During a rally in Youngstown, Ohio in July 2017, the president said, “I’d ask whether or not you think I will someday be on Mount Rushmore, but here’s the problem: If I did it jokingly, totally joking, having fun, the fake news media will say, ‘he believes he should be on Mount Rushmore. So I won’t say it, okay?”

This is a common – albeit pathetic – refrain by Trump, to say that he won’t say something because the media will report on it, as if that negates the words he just said. Beyond the semantics, the notion that Trump is too humble to desire to be on Mount Rushmore is beyond laughable in and of itself.

Luckily for future generations, they won’t have to suffer through the daily sight of Trump’s face on the landmark. According to Maureen McGee-Ballinger, the public information officer at Mount Rushmore, “There is no more carvable space up on the sculpture. When you are looking on the sculpture, it appears there might be some space on the left next to Washington or right next to Lincoln. You are either looking at the rock that is beyond the sculpture (on the right), which is an optical illusion, or on the left, that is not carvable.”

Noam did jokingly suggest an alternative to Trump: “Come pick out a mountain.” To her, I would only say not to tempt fate.